I have an fc7 box that I'm trying to remove a directory on. I don't
remember why I was playing with the directory permissions in the first
place, but I just want to get rid of it.
the directory is in /root and looks like this:
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 2048 2007-11-09 15:35 tmp
I can't do anything with it. Any file change I try to make, chmod, rm,
mv, etc I get this error like:
chmod: changing permissions of `tmp': Read-only file system
How can I get rid of this directory? I've been googling in circles and
can't find a solution.
Thanks,
James

Hi, James,
Since root owns the directory, you have to be root to change it. BUT!!
be aware that tmp is a system directory. Any buffering, temporary
storage, or image viewing you do on the internet likely uses this
directory.
Try the following:
su -
enter the password for root as requested
cd /
chmod 777 tmp
chmod +t tmp
ls -al | grep tmp
drwxrwxrwt ## root root #### 2007-11-15 11:24 tmp
Note that ## is

a number which I think is size in
blocks which includes the file in the directory, and that #### is the
size of the actual file

The t symbol marks the file as temporary, which is of interest to some
utilities during boot. IF you omit the t, the tmp fill will eventually
overflow because it is not being flushed.
Regards,
Les H

I think he does not mean the /tmp directory, but rather a directory in
/root/tmp.
Anyway, "read-only filesystem" means what it says. You cannot change
anything on a filesystem
that is read-only. You cannot remove directories, edit files, change
permissions, etc.

As Mikkel already said, the output of the mount command is a bit more
helpfull to solve this problem.